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Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Delightful Dewey & Fabulous Flamingo (Spanish Virgins)

Culebra and Viquez (@ right) relative to

Puerto
Rico. Culebrita is smaller, not

visibile in this scale, next to Culebrita.

In case there was any doubt,
Dewey and Flamingo are places, not people, in the not that well-known out islands
of Puerto Rico, “marketed” as “The Spanish Virgins.Dewey is a town, Flamingo a bay and beach; both are on the
island of Culebra.Culebra’s a
little over 50 miles from San Juan, the capitol city of the big island and US
territory of Puerto Rico.

Dewey appears to be a
local’s playground. The bulk of
visitors come by ferry from Puerto Rico for a quaint, small-town experience,
and maybe a hop over to family-friendly, long, broad Flamingo Beach.

We appreciated Dewey’s
Visitor Center, where we got great maps of all three Spanish Virgin Islands and
of Puerto Rico.Refreshingly, the
Visitor Center representative not only easily answered our questions about the local
bus, she didn’t try to “sell” us anything. She strongly suggested checking out
Puerto Rico’s El Yunque Puerto Rico’s national rainforest park (we did – watch
for it in an upcoming post) based on our interests.

One of many charming murals around Culebra;this one was in Dewey.

Dotted with restaurants,
vibrant murals and colorful architecture, it was a pleasure to wander
Dewey.We were equally thrilled
that even the little market’s prices (there are no big markets) were in most
cases even more reasonable than St. Thomas.

We ovenighted in Dewey, then
sailed around the island to anchor in Flamingo Bay, reveling in its crystal
clear water and powdery white soft sand beaches.We were intrigued by two colorfully painted army tanks, one
near and one nearly in the water (watch for an upcoming post on that)!

If this unliftable lift bridge went
through, the sail between

Dewey and Flamingo would’ve been very short.

We eyed and sniffed but
didn’t indulge in the goodies, both native and mainstream Americana at the
boardwalk-like food kiosks.We did
buy and appreciately down a cold soda, when we asked directions for a forest
reserve. We found out we didn’t miss reserve, it was off limits, fenced off.

After our long walk, I took
a dip to check out the lie of our anchor chain.It was more twisted than Presidential pre-election accusations.Wayne straighted it out, re-orienting
our boat with our dinghy.Watching, I was startled by three stingrays skimming the ocean floor
next to our anchor, but not too startled to snorkel over to the nearby reef to
check out the coral and other sea life.

Beautiful Famingo Beach, Culebra

As the day died down,
Flamingos Beachgoers drifted away.Once again, as with sister island Ilsa Culebrita (click here to read about that) we had an anchorage to ourselves.We took in the starry night sky, and
howled at a magnificently near-full moon. We had no worries about disturbing
the neighbors.